Speaking after the 1 Per Cent limit of proposed pay awards for Workers across the NI public sector was peremptorily announced today by the Department of Finance, ICTU Assistant General Secretary Owen Reidy Commented:
"This amounts to a pay increase of less than half the rate of inflation over the past year for most public sector workers. 'Flexibility' within tightened Departmental budgets is actually a constraint for those budgets, a choice of raiding budgets already shrivelled by a decade of austerity.
"For the past 18 months, the NI trade union movement has lobbied and persuaded MLAs, MPs and Councillors that the Pay Cap is a real imposition on families and a drag on the entire NI economy. Talk from Westminster that the spending taps are gushing is exposed as hollow rhetoric.
"Working families ought to consider their household economics as they think about their pre-Xmas vote in the forthcoming General Election"
"Public Sector trade unions will accept nothing less than free collective bargaining for pay increases above inflation for their members. Those workers are already responding to this short-sighted policy of wage suppression by a government which is happily profligate in other areas. The reaction to this policy will be increased support for industrial action across all public services."
